Halo Infinite Campaign Discussion & thoughts... (probable spoilers) (343 please read!)

Games Halo Infinite
21

In response to your comments about what happened to all the spartan IVs, I have a few thoughts.

First of all, it makes the most sense for the enemy to wipe all of them out first. They are the strongest and most deadly, not to mention many of the Banished are looking for a worthy challenge, which many of the Spartans provide. Additionally as someone else mentioned and you yourself probably said, the spartan IVs were probably much more active with operations and assaults, plans, attacks, etc. than the marines. One such audio you hear is several Spartans planning an attack on one of the battery guns to bring them down. Considering it’s still operational when the masterchief arrives, I can only assume their operation failed. There was also the one elite who captured and tortured Spartans, not to mention the fact that they had two units/bosses who were specifically designated “Spartans killers” with the responsibility of hunting down and killing Spartans. So again, it has nothing to do with them being useless or weak. Just that they were targeted and wiped out first. And if any of them were captured I can only assume they were killed immediately, as opposed to when you go amd rescue marines they’re still alive but tied up/restrained because they’re less of a threat.

The other possibility is that there are countless Spartan IVs alive on another part of the ring or something and they will show up in future DLC. Remember, the campaign only took place on a small part of the ring. Who knows who or what is hanging around on the rest of it.

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22

8 survive the from what the audio logs showed after the ring was destroyed. Griffon rallied everyone at the Reverie and decided to take 4 of them to try to kill Escharum and basically walk into a trap. Reverie is then raided and the other 4 are force to depart. 2 go down into the conservatory to get killed by the Elite Spartan killer. Spartan stone gets killed next to where we start finding out about the Harbinger. Only 1 Spartan 4 survives. Horvath who bugs out an goes up spin after everyone else is dead. As for the majority of spartan 4 as we saw in game, the spartan space station was destroyed by its AI who sacrificed itself to kill everyone on board.
As for the AA guns 2 were taken down before the guardian unleashed what may have been a beam/Emp. We also know right after this the halo rings starts tearing itself apart. Stone and a lifeboat almost go off the edge. As for Osiris they were split up with Buck taking charge of Alpha 9 and from the audio logs many believe that Blue team is with Locke on his mission for operation Circuit Breaker. I suspect that this would be going back to the ark. Logically speaking if the halo ring was ever almost activated again infinity would want someone on the ark to monitor the rings if they were to go back into standby mode. My guess is they will come across Spirit of Fire and that will be who shows up in DLC. Nowhere in any of the logs do they address the ring even moving or teleporting away from the planet. However, what we also don’t see in the opening cut scenes is the Guardian that is visible on the horizon in game. So, either it transported to the halo, or the halo transported to it. As for the Infinity it may have crashed through the rings as a last-ditch effort or may have lost control all together with the emp. However, there isn’t any Debree from it. My guess is the DLC will either be 1 of 2 things. Either finding Spartan Tomas Horvath and others somewhere else on the ring or they would have a DLC where you play as one of the spartans during the events of to finally shush the majority of complaints the community has with the story… Who knows? That would be the logical way to address issues but then again, that is logical, not practical.

23

The pilots responses may be accurate, but not Chiefs.

You remember in Halo 2 when they are about to go across the bridge with the scorpion? You have that scared sless Marine who tries to bug out with Johnson, and Johnson’s like “you hit Marine?” "No? Then get your s together. "
That’s the sort of “pep talk” that should have went on. We got work to do, we can sit around a fire and talk about our feelings when we are done.

And please don’t let us rehash the campaign as another Spartan in the DLC.

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24

Long time halo vet here, been playing halo ever since xbox original days when I was just a kid.

My thoughts on the SP can be summed up in two words. “Too short”.

It was amazing, and I loved it, but it was wayyyy too short.

I have a few issues also, the last boss seemed “meh” and rushed.
There wasnt enough explaining about Cortana.
Why is there no fall damage!?
The outside map felt a little “small”.
Why is there only ONE spawnable flying vehicle.

Aside from that I really really enjoyed the SP.

25

Haha, love this post :rofl:

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26

Quote - “I guess because they’re a priority target and probably involved in the heaviest fighting. They did have units specifically meant to kill Spartans. I also think the audio logs discuss a little bit about some specific mission which involved most of them on this section of the ring.”

Answer - Maybe. Just seems odd that six months without resupply, logistical support or apparently the leadership of any officers above the rank of basic NCO’s, the Chief still encounters marines alive and fighting the Banished. (The British 1st Airborne division was under similar conditions at Arnhem during Market Garden. They held out for about 8 days)

But the UNSC’s elite special forces specifically trained to operate independently behind enemy lines, trained to operate without support, and equipped with state of the art genetic enhancements and energy shielded equipped power armour couldn’t hold out as long as the squishy little humans protected by nothing more then flak vests and ballistic helmets. Maybe it can all be hand-waived away by saying the Banished targeted them as a priority with their own special forces. But I still feel that’s letting the Spartan IV’s of the hook for what may have been ultimately a very bad combat performance under pressure compared to the standard run of the mill UNSC marines. (It would hardly be the first time in history a military force of supposedly ‘elite forces’ drastically underperformed)

Quote - “I never really got the hate. It’s just the same banter the marines had, but they’re super soldiers. People rave about Red Team but they literally are that same sort of jokey merry band in Halo Wars 2. So what gives? The UNSC can’t be the good guys if they’re kidnapping kids and doing cruel experiments on them. It’s not like keeping AI as slaves or a questionable attitude to the colonies (these issues are sidestepped or ignored); it’s far too in your face too ignore. So, they just improved the technology and made it work.”

Answer - I think the difference is between Halo 1 - 3 (and the various spin-off games) while there is banter between the marines, it’s in the background. As the player you really have to make a conscious effort to listen to what their saying, and because the story between Halo 1 - 3 is so engaging they just come across as professional soldiers doing their job under very difficult conditions. In Halo 4’s Spartan Ops the banter between the Spartan IV’s plays out in the cinematic cutscenes, so is much more in the players face as you don’t have option as the player to turning to something in more interesting. By the time Spartan Ops begins the mystery concerning what Requiem is and what it was built for isn’t there. It’s just a slugging match between the UNSC and Covenant, and with no engaging villains the focus becomes the dialogue between the Spartan IV’s and other human characters ,which despite some good cinematics isn’t that interesting to listen to. (343 must have wasted so much money on cinematics over the last 8 years, considering nothing we’ve seen in any have really been continued)

343 also made the cardinal sin in my opinion of drastically overpowering the Spartan IV’s because for some absurd reason they wanted the new reclaimer saga to ‘turn the tables’ on the former dynamic between the Covenant and humanity in relation to who dominated who. The problem is one of the things that made the original trilogy so engaging was that the backstory was truly a story of the underdog, with humanity being outnumbered, outgunned, outmatched, and in the verge of extinction. That kind of setting gives real weight to everything we see in the game, and it’s makes it easy to sympathise with the poor bloody infantry of the UNSC marine core when we see their corpses littering human bases or UNSC being lobbed around like rag-dolls by Brutes.

It’s a lot less easy to sympathise with 7 foot tall armoured human super soldiers that joke around while the plot bends over itself backwards to constantly remind us are not in any real physical danger due to copious amounts of plot armour. (How many dead Spartan IV’s do you remember seeing throughout Spartan Ops?)

I think that’s one of the reasons Spartan IV’s get the distain they do. Which I think is somewhat justified.

27

The campaign is set in stone that I don’t think there is much 343 can do to improve things like replayable missions. For me, the story was too dry and cut short. I felt like I was playing Breath Of The Wild running to each tower to light up the map and everything in between was left feeling empty. It’s the short answer to what the experience was for me.

My concern is the open world on how much it is lacking with things to do and the major issues it has with the AI, vehicles, etc… and I’m wondering if 343 is going to put some effort into actually improving it or if they just plan on leaving it alone and sell more empty DLC to ignore the glaring issues it has.

IMO the campaign wasn’t even worth the $60 for how empty the story/open would actually is.

28

I’m sure others have answered this, but I figured I’d give my take on things and try to also answer your questions with the information I have.

  1. Cortana deleted/destroyed herself.
    Once she was locked down by The Weapon and saw that The Banished were winning/going to win, in a fraction of a second she records a message to Chief. From my understanding she overloads a section of the ring to destroy both herself and hopefully Atriox. This she hopes, will give Chief time to try and stop The Banished while the ring repairs and will allow for The Weapon to persist and help Chief. This leads us to the current end of the main campaign.

Personally I was hoping that The Weapon was just Cortana masquerading as a different AI to try to be with Chief again. And sure yes that would have been a terrible story, but I would have liked it and that sadly is not what we got. Instead it’s just a stripped down unexperienced non psychotic version of Cortana.

  1. Everyone else from 4 and 5 are off doing other missions. You can find UNSC audio logs that give you this information. You could probably just find a YouTube video with all of them. Most of them were on pads found at the fobs.

As for more information on events between 5 and Infinite you’d need to read 2 books that released last year… or 2020.

  1. Everyone thought Atriox was dead, maybe. He was in the section of the ring when it exploded or was heavily damaged. Clearly he’s not dead and seems to be doing something in the background the entire time. This I’m sure will be revealed soon in future dlc.

For the most part I enjoyed the campaign. I found running around the ring during the semi open world sections to be kind of fun if not occasionally boring. Currently I’m going through the game again on legendary and I’m slowly realizing that 343 did not really design this with legendary difficulty in mind. In most past games you find weapons along the way to help you during the big fights that you can save, but in infinite you get large firefight immediately after large firefight in rapid succession without being able to restock any large weapons that are highly effective against stronger enemies. There are plenty of racks with basic weapons sure, but because you burn through ammo you’re going to run out of ammo for the stronger weapons unless you hold on to them and find one of those ammo stations. The ammo stations are one of the things I like least about the campaign. It feels very weird to just have a random box that just fills up a certain type of gun. It’s probably one of the least Halo things in the campaign.

29

Overall I thought it was the most fun Halo in a long time. I think the open world really lends itself to Halo’s gunfights and combat. Allowing you to truly approach every scenario your own way. At times I thought it was too easy to become overpowered. Like why not just spawn a Scorpion from every FOB and destroy everyone? But after a while I realised I was truly enjoying getting into fights and switching it up with each encounter.

Another thing I’m liked was the sense of expratuon and the grapplehook. Genuinely enjoyed climbing up mountains and finding little caves and crevices throughout.

At the same time the open world wasn’t too laborious and it felt like it was there to service the core game loop - which is shooting Aliens and stealing their stuff and shooting more.

Obviously it’s the first Halo Open World and with each positive there’s a counter.

The lack of stark environmental diversity becomes apparent - especially towards the end. And all the Classic Halo missions end up taking place in the same Underground Forerunner Structures.

Due to the huge amount of exploration available the Out of Bound Zones and Immediate death zones become more intrusive. Often I’d see an interesting patch of land I’d want to explore but immediately die.

It was a little jarring when the last 1/3 of the game refused to let you back into the open world. Though at the same time Open World stories can easily lose momentum when giving the player too much freedom in the end game. Characters saying “we need to do this right now!” But then you go and explore for 20 hours instead.

I mostly liked the characters and the more character driven storyline. There would be a few moments I wouldn’t enjoy. But I liked the Chief and Weapons interactions. I ended up liking the Pilot by the end. And I did enjoy Escherum’s Ramblings and self reflective thinking. I liked how both Atriox and Cortana sort of haunted the story in different way. Cortana as a point of grief and failure for Chief and Atriox as a Martyr.

The worst part was the plot driven elemtns involving Eschand the Harbinger. It felt underdeveloped and rather uninteresting. You can’t just say “The Endless are worse than the Flood”. The story doesn’t do a good job of making the mystery interesting or the threat compelling. And the Banished Roundtable conversations failed to elicit any real interest the same way seeing the goings on of the Covenheirarchy did in Halo 2.

I actually dound Escherum more interesting when he was talking directly to the Chief and through his Audio Logs. He was obviously blustering and taunting but you got a sense of him as a rounded character who happens to be a Taunting Brute. Rather than just taunting for the sake of one dimensional villainy.

30

The Campaign was amazing, however lack of replayability kinda kills it for me. Especially when you complete everything on Zeta Halo it feels like you can’t do much else. Maybe have the UNSC Send out alerts that FOBS are being raided so we can try out our endgame toys.

31

I’ve got a question, do you think they’ll include campaign dlc such as a Destiny format? And keep rolling out different campaign “events” over the seasons. Therefore, continually updating the experience or will we have to wait another 6+ years for the next campaign content?

32

I have some probably deeper questions after the campaign :sweat_smile:

  1. How did those ring artifacts end up at Zeta?
    It kinda sounds like they have been there all along, which would mean that Zeta wasn’t build by Foreunners…?
    It’s probably more likely they were shipped to the Ring after dealing with the Xalanyn…
    But then they were placed there randomly? Not inside a specific storage place?

  2. They are talking about “it’s not the first time this ring had to repair itself”. So, what happened before?

  3. The meeting between Foreunner and Xalanyn was called a “parley”, which sounds like a truce…?

  4. Pyre also said “They believe we are here to help”. Why did the Xalanyn need help?

  5. She also said “Time for the Silent Auditorium to serve its purpose once more”. When was the first time?

  6. Are the Xalanyn and the Endless the same species? To me, it sounds more like they are two different things.
    Those two names were never mentioned in the same line. Harbinger sometimes talks about “we” and sometimes, when she is specifically mentioning the Endless, she is saying “they”.

  7. Why did the Foreunners hide anything about this? They were literary the worst and did all kind of terrible things - and they were quite open about their sins of the past. So one more, additional war crime doesn’t really matter. I have a small theory that the Xalanyn might somehow could have been a solution which would have made the firing of the Halo arrays obsolete. This would mean they killed the entire Galaxy when there was a better way. This would be something pretty embarrassing which I would hide in my vita…

  8. What was Cortana’s agenda with the Endless? Seems like she wanted to release them, as well. But she was probably already immortal (as long as she doesn’t nuke herself…). She also had the Guardians, and with their help, she could destroy any planet with a snap of her fingers. How more powerful could you be? But perhaps it wasn’t about power. Perhaps it was more about…a state of existence? (Becoming Human?). Or actually about turning back time…

Btw: Remember the golden rule:
If someone doesn’t die on screen, he or she probably isn’t dead :man_shrugging:
(Referring to all Halo 4 and 5 Characters which didn’t appear in Infinite)

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33

After experiencing Rookie and Black team, 343 will not easily kill a player who has played or been widely praised. This will lead to public opinion risk and is not conducive to making money.
Out of selfishness, I hope Lasky, Palmer, Roland and Jared Miller can survive. They accompanied me through the boring Spartan Ops.

34

my thoughts: the campaign was great. really invigorating atmosphere going in, it’s fun to play, the music gets me going. the world/ring looks gorgeous.

but i was severely disappointed finishing this game and there being hardly any actual “story”. the trailers got me so hyped and after the events of Halo 5, had me excited for this whole war/finishing of war and all the stuff that basically just happened off screen in Infinite. they just threw all of that to side and brought up the aftermath of it and have you play through that instead. total laziness in my opinion and a missed opportunity. the story doesn’t completely ruin the game but when people ask, i tell them it felt like a filler episode in a tv series. a terrible one. i didnt care for the characters. some of the enemies were kind of cool but that’s it. there is so much more this game SHOULD have been but isn’t.
dont get me wrong though. i love this game. i’ve hardly put it down in my free time. but it could have been better. i just dont feel like i played through an epic videogame. it’s like the Halo story just completely derailed and we’re cleaning up the mess in this installment of the series. i have never been less…excited for where the series might be going now. like i said i love Halo but there was nothing making this story keep my eyes on it. i also was very confused throughout it.

35

Halo Infinites story is very surprising. I would love some more info on The Infinity an the Spirit of Fire crews. Many have been asking for aliens to use UNSC weapons all along a pleasent surprise. Skirmishers an Skimmers flank well the Skirmishers could use some more powerful weapons or shoot more rapidly they really are not more of a threat then a grunt but classic. The shielded variants of Brutes an Elites got nice upgrades. It would be nice to see some more ODST Spartan 4s an Army troopers in game lore if There’s more to it… I’m also curious as to how the Banished managed to drop the Infinity in 4 minutes after contending with the veteran ship Spirit of Fire which if I’m correct first fought the covenant back on Harvest before stopping the Arbiters troops from salvaging forerunner ships…

36

Weapon Variants definitely need to be able to pick up regular ammo - what’s the point of upgraded gear if you can barely use it?

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Overall, I’d say the campaign was a net positive, but one thing I’m left wondering about it was why 343 bothered to make Cortana the antagonist yet do pretty much nothing with that concept. They made a big deal about how she thinks in terms of thousands of years yet all Infinite shows of her rule was that she acted like a barbarian wielding a cudgel and breaking things throughout the galaxy. People like Frank O’Connor gave folks grief for thinking she was evil then has her blow up the Brute homeworld to spite Atriox. Why?

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38

Frank Oconner wasn’t the writer for 5 or 4. Brian Reed was the one who pushed that narrative and is no longer with 343i. However, given why they would write Cortana off the way that they did has to her and weapon being similar parallels as offensive and mendicant bias. With both mendicant and Cortana trying to atone after having been through the logic plague, turning on their creators and being replace by another variant. In a sense this is meant to show those who read the book that the Gaes of Born Steller is still relevant moving forward with certain plotlines that were not abandoned after Reed’s removal.

With the removal of Cortana this creates a power vacuum and allows certain plot lines to open up. For example, it was the precursors who actually made the Domain and with every AI under Cortana having used it to stave off and cure rampancy, what is to say it wasn’t another trap set by the grave mind. What will become of the Prometheans and other forerunner installations?

39

I guess the other question is what happen to Majestic, Osiris, (buck not included), Crimson, Glassmen, ext. I feel like they are playing fast and loose with all the plotlines/holes that have been previously established as to not step on their own feet. This is what we get in return. Whomever is now in charge of the story board has to make sure he understands both the games and other material being written as to not break canon as much as they once did. However, given the opening for halo 4 and the trailer for infinite with other spartans fighting brutes on Earth, it may take some time for them to clean up their mess.

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40

the campaign is not bad at all.
but after you start playing on legendary then its on some place where you need to think good and learn more from the first time you play to the campaign on a lower difficulty to make some note’s on your own from place’s where you need to look out more before you go start on legendary and what the best way is to do it since there are some trouble points if you bring the wrong weapon for exemple to a boss fight.

but after you compleet it also on legendary is it always more fun for me to start a new save file on legendary and do some twist’s here and there.
like some boss kill then on a diffrend way and more on a funny way if it can.
its always good to have some back up plans you can do if the funny thing is failing hard that you can use a back up plan to kill it.

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